Tag Archives: Iran

Eric Hobsbawm defined the 19th century as “The Long Nineteenth Century”, starting in 1789 and ending in 1914, and the 20th century as the “The Short Twentieth Century”, from 1914 to 1991. In reality also the 20th century could be considered a “long century”, at least in its conception and its heritage: we can say that it started in 1865, with the civil war and the end of slavery in America (the strongest democratic step since its independence for the most powerful country of 20th century) and ended definitely in 2016, when an American President visited Cuba, 88 years after the last one, and Fidel Castro died, almost 60 years after its Cuban Revolution. These events marked the final end of the ideological cold war, the planetary confrontation between capitalism and communism, which represented the history of the second part of 20th century.

All people under oppression appealed to a liberation ideology for a revolution against the status quo since the beginning of times. Revolutions bring dignity and self-determination to people, and they have been liberating people from oppression in every corner of the planet. But revolutions in their aftermath has difficulty to realize the dream of a idealistic society and they risk to even distort the original ideals (sometimes as a need to defend from external attacks) and build authoritarian regimes, as history shows from French revolution with Napoleon dictatorship to American Revolution with black slavery, from Iranian revolution to the Arab Spring. Fidel Castro, like all the revolutionaries, was a freedom fighter for his people, and actually he declared just after the revolution that he would have started finally a democracy in Cuba (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjpnfDwWd7Y) but then became another Prince, the enlightened tyrant who believes in the utopia that a society can be guided from top down for the good of the people. Actually while many Cuban policies had good effect, like high levels of public education and health, the development of the country for the end of people poverty failed, in particular after the end of the Soviet Union. So today the Cuban regime needs to find a new model, may be the Chinese one with state capitalism, if it wants to survive.

The revolutions are important for the self-determination of people in the short term but they are not enough for their democratic and economic flourishing in the long term. As we political scientists knows, it is the constant and progressive reforms towards an inclusive and empowering economic and political system that brings real human liberation in the history of humankind. Gorbacev attempted to reform Sovietic communism to make it more legitimate, efficient and sustainable as ideology and system, and even if he failed he opened the space on the right track. When Putin will die (as it seems that he will not leave the power before that) that path will have to be retaken if Russia wants to go towards real modernization and development. Same for Cuba after the end of the old guard, or Iran, after the end of Ayatollah regime, as well as the other countries that failed to democratize with the Arab Spring or are still monarchies like Saudi Arabia.

This doesn’t meant though that all countries have to follow exactly the Western style liberal democracies for a future of “End of history”, as Fukuyama believed. Actually culture matters and also the liberal representative democracies of the Western world will need reforms to survive and flourish anyway. Democracy and human liberation, equality and inclusion are never ending processes, as we can see from the Roman Republic two millennia and half ago to the election of Trump in a divided democratic American society. And, most important, democracy and human liberation has to be authoctonous, coming from an internal evolution of a country, with its traditional systems, cultural elements and historical approaches. There is no one solution fits it all, as the “one person one vote” of the universal suffrage is an historical evolution of European individual rights against the old tyranny of the nobility, but other geographies and histories have to develop their own way of social contract and political representation, that could be more communitarian than individualistic.

As Castro said once “ideas don’t need arms if they convince masses” and also “who doesn’t believe in the human being is not a revolutionary”. So we need to have faith in human beings to change the status quo for a better future and to do that today we don’t need arms if we have ideas: armed revolutions are a tool of the past, when people had less power of today, when we can use education and technology, as we saw with the Arab Spring and we can see in Cuba already with the arrival of internet. Today what we need are new unarmed revolutions, that is “revolutions of ideas”, both in democracies and in autocracies, to face the fast and complex globalization and the risk for the human societies to become more divided, unequal and chaotic. Inequality and exclusion are the cancer of democracies as well as autocracies and to overcome them we will have to make in Western democracies as in non-Western autocracies many political, economic and social reforms, to reach a higher civic education, a more inclusive development, and a more effective governance. We need new ideas and forms to reduce economic inequality, minorities’ exclusion and extreme polarization. We need to fight the risk of populism and make democracies more efficient and sustainable in the long run and autocracies more open societies in a globalized world. We need new leaders and new intellectuals, but also empowered masses, for revolutions of ideas more than armed revolutions.

If Hobsbawn might have been wrong in the definition of “Short Century” he was right on the risks for the future. As he said: “If humanity is to have a recognizable future, it cannot be by prolonging the past or the present. If we try to build the third millennium on that basis, we shall fail. And the price of failure, that is the alternative to a changed society, is darkness.” (The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991, 1994).

The consequences of bringing back Iran to the international community after 35 years cannot be foreseen right now. Israel and Saudi Arabia are not afraid of an Iranian bomb, but of a new leader in the Middle East apart themselves. If the right wing regime of Netanyahu in Israel and the Saudi regime in Saudi Arabia could become in the last decades more and more extreme in their philosophy and actions, it is because they could use the external ‘enemy’ as a factor of social cohesion. And because their possible rivals on the geopolitical chess were weak. It is the divide et impera, ‘divide and rule’ philosophy of the Roman Empire, that made the complexity of the region of the Middle East anarchic, chaotic and never able to integrate itself, since at least one hundred years, since the end of the Ottoman Empire. But these divisions sooner or later will have to give space to some alliances and unions, and the region one day will be united as Europe today. That day people will remember the 2015 as the start of the end of the chaos in the Middle East. It seems a far stretch now but if we deeply think and analyze the history and the politics of that region it doesn’t seem so impossible.

Diplomacy is back in the international relations, after decades of power politics, and this not only with Iran, but with Russia and Cuba too. Also for us, the political scientists, a new paradigm, more European than North American, might start to see the light in the international relations theory: mediations and negotiations as the only solutions to security dilemmas, anarchic system and mistrusting realist views. In particular two non-Arab countries of the Middle East could play a fundamental role for the stabilization and development of the area. In the future regional order of the Middle East Iran could be what Germany has been for Europe, the engine, and Turkey what France has been, the torch. When Iran and Turkey will finally understand that supporting each other is better than competing, that will create the leadership that the Middle East desperately need since one century. Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf countries sooner or later will have to understand that their role is the bridge between Maghreb and Southwest Asia, the region to which they belong historically, geographically and ontologically, is not the Levant but North Africa. It is with their Arab brothers that they have to find a new Renaissance, starting with a renovated Arab League, a new economic integration and a new approach between religion and politics, instead of looking for spheres of influence in the Levant fighting with their competitors, in the Shia crescent.

At the domestic level they need to overcome the fixation in the Shari’atization of civic life and public policy and understand that democracy and emancipation is a natural development of human empowerment. They have good example in the Maghreb to follow, first of all Tunisia, but also Morocco. When the education and the globalization will increase in Gulf countries, together with the end of the oil blessing, on which bases the monarchies maintained their societies backwards, also the Saudis will have to find other ways for their legitimization respect to the Wahhabi sect. And some good Iranian military blow in the next few years (not nuclear fortunately since today) against the Salafist terrorism and may be also the countries backing it, will accelerate the process. But Saudi Arabia will do its process of democratization gradually, as Turkey and Iran already did one century ago. And even if Iranian people have been imprisoned by a religious and military elite that betrayed the ideals of the 1979 revolution (as everyone who hijack the revolutions, since the Bolshevik one in 1917 to the Arab Spring in 2011) also Iran will soon go towards a more modern democracy, as the cold war is ended and the Ayatollah regime finally starts to be out of touch with the contemporary world and with his people. That will be the moment in which also Israel will feel more safe. Today is the starting of this process. As the welcome back of China in 1979 after 30 years contributed to the stability in Asia, the new Iranian rapprochement will be a fundamental element for the stability in the Middle East in the XXI century.

ISIS and the rest of Jihadists will make more blood unfortunately, like yesterday with the poor students of the college in Kenya, but when the need of money, the request of weapons and the thirst of power will not be satisfied anymore, also the Jihadist threat to the world will be erased, as it has been done with the Soviet one. Iran will have its role in this, militarily and culturally, together with Turkey, when both countries will have walked also on their path to empower their democracies, going back to the ideals that at the beginning of XX century inspired their Constitutional revolutions. But for today we need to celebrate and be enthusiast, as the Iranian people on the streets. The prodigal son is back for this Good Friday. I am happy for Iran, for Israel and for the Middle East. I am happy also for China, Russia, the US and Europe, that learned to cooperate and mediate. I am happy that the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy today is an Italian diplomat, Federica Mogherini. Remembering how Berlusconi stupidly refused 10 years ago the Iranian offer to participate to the negotiation. And I am happy that Obama will not be remembered only because of being black. The American Congress will have to learn to be more humble in these last years of his mandate. The Norwegian Noble Committee had been farsighted as usual.

The next few years will be of fundamental importance to the future of the Middle East, the ‘pivotal region’ for the US and world order in the XXI century, but this month could be the turning point. At the beginning of XX century nobody would have thought that Europe was going to have the worst first half century of its history, even if followed by probably the best second half century. Today it is difficult to imagine how will be the XXI century for the Middle East: could be catastrophic or surprisingly idyllic, but probably will be neither of one. Both historian and political scientists have difficulty to predict the future everywhere and in the Middle East even more: while the firsts today need to avoid easy analogies the latters need to build a new paradigm for understanding the current international system. In our era of globalization, complexity and constant mutation of the international system it is difficult to reach the goal of reducing the uncertainty of the future, and the Middle East is one of the most difficult regions for such objective.

Admittedly, the Middle East has always been one of the world’s crucial regions and, for the past several decades, for the United States as well. Notwithstanding a reported US “pivot” to Asia, the Obama administration has recently been pulled back into the Middle Eastern quagmire. This was already true after the dramatic events of 9/11 and the subsequent Iraq war; but it is even clearer today, in the context of the civil wars and the new terrorist groups that have been born since the Arab Spring. Faced with lesser domestic and political pressures during the last two years of his second administration, Obama is at a crossroad: will he end his mandate with some positive achievement that would confirm he deserved the Nobel peace prize and that his new approach to American foreign policy, based on dialogue and non-intervention, was real and not a rhetoric proposition? Will the Middle East be the region where he will show his skills of a transformational leader?

I think that even in a so called ‘post-American/post-Western’ world, the United States will still play a fundamental role as the ‘international leader’ in the Middle East. The future of the Middle East (as the future of the world) may well be post-American and post-Western but it will not become non-American and non-Western as the United States remains a crucial actor. But I also think that the US will not be able to play their role effectively without the support of new regional powers. This means that Israel and Saudi Arabia cannot remain the only countries that the US feel comfortable to cooperate with, and more partners and allies will be needed for the United States to recuperate the efficacy and legitimacy lost in Iraq, to help solve the Middle Eastern conflicts. More specifically, two other regional powers should be included by the US in the Middle East chessboard, in order to build in the future a ‘peace to end all wars’, to paraphrase the sentence of Wilson one century ago — two non-Arab Muslim countries that have millenary civilizations and recently re-emerged as significant regional powers: Iran and Turkey.

While the US and Iran have been bitter rivals in the Middle East for 34 years, their conflictual relationship is increasingly difficult to sustain. A possible rapprochement, announced with the recently-launched nuclear talks will not be easy, but will be possible. It will require, among other things, also to convince Israel that a deal will be sooner or later make, and that the case of a future nuclear Iran would be manageable, allowing Iran’s return to the international community but at the same time guaranteeing the protection of Israel. In order to reach this goal the US might need the support of other regional powers, including one – Turkey – that is a NATO ally and could become the second stronger US ally in the Middle East after Israel. Six years after Obama entered the White House he does not seem to have a clear strategy yet, not only because of the chaos in the Middle East but because the US finds it difficult to deal with a multipolar world, being much more at ease with the bipolar world of the Cold War. But if the US wants to retain its leadership and ‘soft power’ in the world needs to have a clear strategy and efficacy in implementing it, and the last two years of the Obama administration (with a majority of the Congress in the hand of Republican opposition) could force the President to take bold actions in this direction. The first of this bold actions should be a nuclear deal with Iran at the end of this month.

The nuclear issue is first, to be sure, but there are other issues too, related to stability and peace in the Middle East, which cannot be postponed much longer as time is running out, from the ISIS war to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The factors of mistrust have not changed between the US and Iran for 34 years, but Obama seemed to wish to abandon this road to nowhere. From his speeches in Cairo and Oslo (where he received the Nobel Peace Prize) in 2009 it took 5 years to arrive to the ‘Geneva interim agreement on the Iranian nuclear program’ in 2013, the first treaty between US and Iran in 34 years. But diplomacy needs time and patience. Will Obama be able to become the transformational leader that he wanted to be with the Iranian détente? Or will he fail to bend Iran allowing the crossing of the red line? This is the test for America in the nuclear deal with Iran. That is why a deal at the end of November is a must, as it could really start a positive rapprochement with spillover effects for the stability of the region, in the long term, that we cannot even imagine right now.